Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 247 at Background Briefing.org.

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

We begin with the President of the United States not just saying he's in charge of Venezuela,

but setting up private accounts he controls in Qatar to control the revenues from oil

that he allows to get to the market since Trump has a naval blockade of Venezuela

in what can be described as resource imperialism or

imperial racketeering.

Joining us is Aaron Regenberg, a contributing editor at the New Republic, a climate lawyer

and progressive organizer.

He is the director of the Climate Accountability Project at Public Citizen and previously served

as a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives.

We will discuss his latest article at the New Republic, the Don Row Doctrine is a scam.

Then we'll examine what the historian Heather Cox Richardson describes as Trump's Putinization

of American foreign policy and speak with Dr. Louise Shelley,

the Omar L. Nancy Hurst and Dow chair emeritus and a university professor emerita at George Mason University.

She's the founder of the Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at the Shah School of Policy and Government.

A leading expert on the relationship among terrorism, organized crime and corruption as well

as human trafficking, transnational crime and terrorism, with a particular focus on the former

Soviet Union.

She specializes in illicit financial flows and money laundering and is the author of Dirty

Entanglements, Corruption, Crime and Terrorism, and Dark Commerce.

How a new illicit economy is threatening our future.

...