Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the White House meeting today between Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio

and the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, which was preceded by mafia threats from Trump

that the Danes could do it the easy way or the hard way because one way or another, Trump is going

to own Greenland. Joining us from Copenhagen is Mikhail Runga Ollison, a senior researcher

at the Danish Institute for International Studies, where he specializes in Arctic security

and transatlantic relations. Then with Trump poised to bomb Iran amid unconfirmed reports

that the Iranian regime has offered Trump an off-ramp by stopping the killings and delaying

executions. We will speak with Dr. Nancy O'Kale, President's CEO of the Center for International

Policy, a scholar and advocate of human rights, justice, peace and equity.

She has over 20 years of experience working on these issues

across the Middle Eastern North African region, as well as globally,

and she provides policy recommendations to senior government officials in the US and Europe.

We will discuss her article at the New Republic. Military intervention will

not liberate the Iranian people. Then finally we'll assess the damage about to be done by the return

of the fascist troll, who, as the world's richest manchild, bought the last election for the Republicans,

and is about to buy the next, and speak with Jacob Silverman, a contributing writer for the Republicans and is about to buy the next and speak with Jacob

Silverman, a contributing writer for the New Republic and a contributing editor for the Baffler covering

tech and national security. He is the co-author of easy money, cryptocurrency, casino capitalism

and the Golden Age of Fraud, which was a New York Times bestseller,

co-authored with Ben McKenzie, and his latest is, Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the

Radicalization of Silicon Valley.

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