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 a few hours ahead of the Harris-Trump presidential debate and assess the role that foreign policy is likely to play,

since it appears to be a low priority for most voters,

but one that could come down to whose finger do you want on the nuclear button,

given how unstable Trump is,

according to his own top military officials

who were concerned he could trigger World War III.

Joining us is John Hoffman,

a policy analyst in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute,

and a professor at George Mason University

specializing in Middle East geopolitics and political Islam.

He was recently awarded the 40 Under 40 Award from the Middle East Policy Council for his work on U.S. foreign policy in the region,

and his work has been featured in Middle East Policy, Open Democracy, the Cipher Brief, and Foreign Policy Magazine.

And he's the lead researcher of the U.Gov-Kato Institute's 2024 foreign policy swing state survey.

Then we'll examine whether Democrats are engaged in irrational exuberance from polls that have Harris slightly ahead of Trump and assess the degree to which

the mainstream media is guilty of sanewashing by treating the race in a fair and balanced way

when one of the candidates is increasingly unbalanced and incoherent.

Joining us is Greg Sargent, a staff writer at the New Republic and the host of the New

Republic podcast, The Daily Blast, a seasoned political commentator with over two decades of

experience. He was a prominent columnist and blogger at the Washington Post from 2010 to

2003 and has worked at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine, and the New York Observer.

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