Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing. I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news. We'll begin with an apparent falling out between Trump and Putin following a contentious

phone call last Thursday, after which the Kremlin's main propaganda outlet TV1,

published naked pictures of Melania, and Putin's national security adviser, Petrushchev,

warned Trump of the blackmail they appear to have over him,

quote, to achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations.

As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.

Joining us to assess whether Putin has lost his leverage over Trump, who may feel strong

enough to take the hit from whatever blackmail Putin could expose, is Anders Asland,

a senior fellow at the Stockholm Free World Forum.

A professor at the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University

and a former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Natural

Sciences and worked as a Swedish diplomat in Moscow and served as an economic advisor to the governments

of Russia and Ukraine. His books include Ukraine what went wrong and how to fix it,

and Russia's crony capitalism, the path from market economy to kleptocracy. And we'll discuss his

article at the Kiev Post, what did the Biden administration really want in Ukraine?

Then, with Elon Musk showing up at the Congress today with his new playmate, Donald

Trump, we'll examine the role of the new co-president who Trump is making the head of the

Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, the acronym for a cryptocurrency, Musk has been promoting.

Joining us is Jacob Silverman, a contributing writer for the New Republic and a contributing editor

for the Baffler covering tech and national security. He's the author of Terms of Service,

social media and the price of constant connection, and most recently easy money, cryptocurrency, casino capitalism,

and the golden age of fraud.

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