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 President Trump saying today that he'll know in two weeks if President

Vladimir Putin is tapping us along, warning of a shift if Russia is not serious about peace

in Ukraine. We'll discuss whether Trump is saying the quiet part out loud in his

true social post on Tuesday, in which he said, quote, what Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that

if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia,

and I mean really bad in caps. He's playing with fire.

Joining us is Daniel Treasman, co-director of the Center for European and Russian Studies,

and a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles,

and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in the Behavioral Sciences

at Stanford University, a leading specialist on the politics and economics of post-communist

Russia.

He's the author of a number of books on Russia, including The New Autocracy, Informed Politics

and Policy in Putin's Russia, and Spin Dictators, The changing face of tyranny in the 21st century.

Then, with the Trump administration weaponizing anti-Semitism to extort universities and bring Harvard

to heal, we'll examine the disconnect as top Trump officials, J.D. Vance, and Rubio,

praise the neo-Nazi AFD Party, which

must campaign for in the recent German elections. Joining us is Jacob Halbrun, the editor

of at the National Interest and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia

Center and a columnist for The Spectator. His books include

They Knew They Were Right, The Rise of the Neocons, and America Last, the right century-long

...