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

I'm Ian Masters, and today we're looking to a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with an analysis of the Xi Trump Summit from the inside and discuss the different versions of what Trump said happened and what she and the Chinese media had to say.

Joining us is Orville Shell, who was formerly the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley,

and is currently the Arthur Ross Director of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations.

His books include Mandate of Heaven, The Legacy of Tiananmen Square, and the next generation of China's leaders,

and wealth and power,

China's long march to the 21st century, and he just returned from Beijing, where he was part of

the official delegation at the Trump Xi summit. Then we'll discuss how everything seems to

favor the evil-doer as Trump's mafia-like control over the Republicans

increases in spite of how he is taking the GOP down with his cratering poll numbers. But thanks to

his Supreme Court who brought back Jim Crow could hold onto the House before one vote is cast

in November. Joining us is Mike Lofgren, who spent 28 years

working in Congress as a Republican aide, 16 of which is a senior national security analyst

on the House and Senate Budget Committees. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller

The Party is over. Our Republicans went crazy. Democrats became useless and the middle

class got shafted. And he has an article at Salon we will discuss, restoring American democracy

won't be easy. At least we know what won't work. Then finally we'll examine oil in its role

in global capitalism as the war in the Gulf impacts transport fuel, fertilizers, plastics and chip manufacturing,

threatening food supplies and the financial system, as well as the dollar as a dominant global currency.

Joining us is Adam Henea, who is Director of the Middle East Institute,

MBI Jabber Chair in the Development Studies Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

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