Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

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

begin with Trump's overall office meeting today with the NATO head, Mark Ruthie, and assess

Trump's announcement that he is very, very unhappy with Russia and plans to deliver top-of-the-line

weapons to Ukraine, threatening 100% tariffs on Russia if no ceasefire deal is reached in 50 days.

Joining us is Michael Kimmage, former director of the Wilson Center's Canon Institute, who is

currently a professor of history and department chair at the Catholic University of America,

chair of the Canon Institute Advisory Council, and a fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

From 2014 to 2017, he served on Secretary of State's policy planning staff at the United States Department of State,

where he held the Russia-Ukraine portfolio.

He's the author of the Abamut of the West, the history of an idea in American foreign policy, and collisions the war in Ukraine

and the origins of the new global instability. And we'll discuss his article at the New York Times,

Putin has lost something worse than a war. Then we'll examine the Trump regime's unprecedented

corruption as Trump and his family monetized their second term

and how the trickle-down effect of graft-grifting in crypto-corruption has foreign regimes,

seeing how much their money can buy now that they can invest in not just Trump, but American

elections, thanks to the administration's dropping of the case against

New York Mayor Adams.

Joining us is Casey Michelle, the director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human

Rights Foundation, as well as a writer, analyst, and investor-journalist, working on topics

ranging from kleptocracy, illicit finance, dark money, foreign lobbying, and foreign

interference to the legacies of Russia and Soviet colonialism.

...