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 and his family's monetization of the presidency and U.S. foreign policy as witnessed this week with the White House state visit of Saudi Arabia's previously shunned

crown prince. Joining us to assess how much money the Saudis have lined Trump's pockets

with and Trump's

decades-long obsession with getting his name on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans

is Dan Alexander, a senior editor at Forbes, overseeing money in politics coverage,

as well as the author of White House Inc. How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency

into a business. He has investigated the personal finances of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump,

Wilbur Ross and others, and his work has sparked state and federal investigations,

came up repeatedly in Trump's fraud trial, and helped send longtime Trump Organization

CFO Alan Weisselberg to jail.

His latest articles at Forbes we will discuss are, here's how much Trump received for hosting

Saudi-backed golf events, and here's everything we need to know about Trump's financial ties

to Saudi Arabia. Then with the biggest donor to Republicans in the last election, Elon Musk,

getting a $1 trillion payday from Tesla,

we'll examine how America's 902 billionaires,

with a collective wealth of $6.7 trillion,

donated one in every $13 spent in last year's election, over 80% of which

went to Republicans.

Joining us is William Cohan, a former Senior Wall Street Investment Banker for over 17 years

at Lazard Frere & Company, Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Chase, as well as a New York Times best-selling

...