Hello and welcome to background briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We begin with Trump telling Politico that Venezuela's Maduro's days are numbered,

refusing to rule out a U.S. ground invasion.

With the strikes on so-called drugboats meant to frame the coming conflict in the way that

weapons of mass destruction was the prelude to the Iraq war, this time

the justification appears to be a militarization of the war on drugs. Joining us is William Leogrand,

a professor of government and former dean of the American University School of Public Affairs. He is a

specialist on Latin American politics and has been a frequent

advisor to Congress on issues of U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America, including as a staffer

to the Democratic Policy Committee of the United States Senate. He has written five books,

including most recently Back Channel to Cuba, the Hidden History of history of negotiations between Washington and Havana.

And we will discuss his article at the nation, Trump's gunboat diplomacy. A wannabe emperor

goes in search of an empire. Then with the Wall Street Journal reporting that David

Ellison's hostile takeover attempt of Warner Brothers is a move to appease CNN's

most vocal critic Donald Trump, after Ellison's father had promised the White House that they will get

rid of the CNN hosts Aaron Burnett and Brianna Keeler. We will speak with Victor Picard, a professor at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University

of Pennsylvania, where he co-directs the Media Inequality and 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 is Democracy Without Journalism,

confronting the Misinformation Society. He has an article at The Nation, which discusses the new

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