Background Briefing with Ian Masters

The Incoming Horror of Trump and the Outgoing Sadness of Biden | Biden's Warning of a Tech-Industrial Complex and That We Are Losing Our Democracy to Plutocracy | The Future of TikTok Which the Supreme Court Shut Down Today backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

An Analysis of the Israel-Hamas Ceasefire and Hostage Release Deal | Biden's Warning of a New American Oligarchy and the Danger of a Tech-Industrial Complex backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

What Latitude Will "Little Marco" Have As Secretary of State? | The Confirmation of the Pay-to-Play Pam Bondi For Attorney General | Trump's Grossly Unqualified Wrecking Crew Is Aimed at Deconstructing the American State to Serve the Plutocrats Not the People backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Republican Senators Roll Over the Democrats Determined to Do Trump's Bidding and Confirm a Dangerously Unqualified Ideologue as Secretary of Defense | A Former Female JAG Officer on Hegseth's Disparagement of Women in the Military and Military Justice | Jack Smith's January 6 Report Says Trump Would Have Been Convicted Had the Case Gone To Trial | Unlike Biden, Trump Uses Leverage to Get a Ceasefire and Hostage Release Deal Between Israel and Hamas backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Hearings Begin on Tuesday For Trump's Disastrously Unqualified Nominees | How Pete Hegseth Compares to Former Heads of the Pentagon | The Laken Riley Act Will Empower Anti-Immigrant Zealots

Instead of Helping Angelenos Who Lost Their Homes, Trump Offers Insults | The Third Inauguration of Venezuela's Maduro Who Lost the Last Election in a Landslide | The Scofflaw-in-Chief is Now the Felon-in-Chief backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Today's Moving Memorial of President Jimmy Carter at His State Funeral | How Climate Change Supercharged the Wildfires That Swept Through LA | A Former LAFD Battalion Chief on What it is Like to Confront a Wall of Flame Driven by 80 MPH Winds backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Ghost of Roy Cohn Will Rule Over the Next 4 Years of MAGA Jurisprudence | Environmental and Ecological Factors Behind the Wildfires Raging in LA | Will Homeowners Get Their Insurance Payouts and Will Insurance Still Be Available in Fire-Prone Areas? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Normalization of Trump By the Press and Social Media as Its Owners Bezos and Zuckerberg Move to Flatter Rather Than Fact-Check Him | At Today's Rambling Press Conference Trump Does Not Rule Out Military Force to Take Back the Panama Canal, Grab Greenland and Make Canada the 51st State | Why is Trump Attacking Our Closest Allies While Cozying up to Our Worst Adversaries? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Trump's Orwellian January 6 Victory - Four Years Later Lies Have Won and Truth is Endangered | Today's Resignation of Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau After 9 Years in Office | The Need to Lift Sanctions on Syria Before Chaos Consumes a Failed State

Trump's Ominous Response to the Recent Terrorist Attacks | An American Despot is About to Take Charge With So Much More Power Than Hitler Had in 1933 | A Republican Court Kills Net Neutrality to Reward Unpopular and Antiquated Cable and Telecom Giants backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Latest on the Investigations Into the New Year's Massacre in New Orleans and the Tesla Cyber Truck Explosion in Front of the Trump Hotel | Contrasting the Divisive Trump With Jimmy Carter Who Tried to Bridge Divides | Could Trump be a Peacemaker Even If He Only Wants to Win a Nobel Prize? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Will the Democrats Confront the Economic Conditions That Gave Rise to Right Wing Populism? | How 9/11 Made the Trump Presidency Possible and Hollowed Out the Very Idea of Citizenship in the US | Plutocrats No Longer Shape Our Government Behind the Scenes, Musk is Now Giving House Republicans Orders backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

We Should Take Trump at His Word That He Wants to be a Dictator and Jail His Opponents and the Press | A Deep Investigation of the Far-Right Cult Opus Dei and Its Infiltration of American Politics at the Highest Level | With the Blame Game Underway, the Democrats Need to Focus on Accountability and a Coherent Strategy backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

A View From Abroad as Biden Stands Between the Survival of Global Democracy and the Rule of Law and Dictatorship | Beyond Biden, America Has a Problem With Gerontocracy | How a Reality TV Star Living in His Own Reality Captured the GOP and up to Half of Americans Now Living in a Phony Reality backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

As Trump Encourages Secession and Threatens Civil War, He Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving to China and Russia | Strengthening the Laws of War as Non-combatants Die in Gaza and Ukraine | The Inevitability of Trump 250 Years in the Making With the U.S. Captive to Its Contentious Past backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

A Christmas Day Message From Bethlehem | The Outsized Influence of the Catholic Far Right on the Supreme Court and Project 2025 backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Contrast Between the Prophet of the Poor and Trump's Billionaires Who Own the White House and Have the Supreme Court | The Troubling Religious Beliefs of Trump's Team of "Christian" Zionists backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Trump's Triumph of Lawlessness and the Weaponization of Kash Patel's Federal Bureau of Retribution | Will Elon Musk's Threat to Deploy His Unlimited Amounts of Campaign Money Bring All Republicans to Heel? | With Trump Back Hate and Extremism Are on the Back Burner For Now backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Emerging Threat to the US Economy Trump and Musk's Amateurism Poses | An Even More Dysfunctional Congress With Trump and Musk in Charge of Both Houses? | The Foreign Policy Damage Musk is Already Doing backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Plutocrats No Longer Shape Our Government Behind the Scenes, Musk is Now Giving House Republicans Orders | MAGA Republicans Follow Orban's Model With Project 2025 While Trump Moves to Control the Media as Orban Did, Turning a Democracy Into a Kleptocracy and Dictatorship backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Democratic Old Guard Shoots Down a Rising Star Who Appeals to the Youth and Latino Vote | An expert on Terrorism on Charging Luigi Mangione With Terrorism | Jeff Bezos Bends the Knee Today at Mar a Lago as Trump Muses About Privatizing the USPS backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

As Trump Declares War on the Press, ABC News Preemptively Capitulates | The Latest of 323 School Shooting This Year Involves a 15-Year Old Girl Who Killed 2, Wounded 6 and Shot Herself at Her Christian School | Our "Christo-Fascists" Compared to the Islamo-Fascists We Decry backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Jordan Faces Collapse With Israel's Proposed Annexation of the West Bank | An Alternative to Our Broken "Healthcare" System That Does Not Waste Trillions While Delaying and Denying Care | The Fall of the German Government and Whether Support For Ukraine Will Continue

Is Another Arab Spring Possible With Syria's New Leader and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood? | With Trump's Manic Fanboy Kash Patel in Charge of the Country's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency, Patel's Delusional List of "Traitors" Will Soon Fill the MAGA Gulag | Georgia's Pro-EU Protests Intensify as the Pro-Russian Parliament Installs a Right Wing Footballer as President backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Will Trump and His Shills For Russia like Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard Turn Us Into Putin's America? | Israel and Turkey Appears to be the Winners in Syria While Russia and Iran are the Losers | How Rising Food Prices Played a Decisive Role in the Election and Efforts to Rein In Food Monopolies Like WalMart backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Wall Street's Role in Why We Have the Worst and Most Expensive "Healthcare" in the Developed World | How Ukrainian Military Intelligence Helped the Syrian Rebels | The Vulnerability of the Kurds to Erdogan's Murderous Militia in the New Syria backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Ghost Guns Now a Proven Untraceable and Undetectable Tool For Assassins | America's Dual System of Justice: Punishing Street Criminals While Corporate CEO's Get a Slap on the Wrist | Kash Patel's FBI Will Go After Trump's Enemies While Opening up the U.S. to Putin's Spies backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

How the Islamist Capture of Syria Upends Regional and Global Geopolitics | How Americans Need an Alternative to the Choice Between Trump's "America First" Unilateralism and Biden's "America is Back" Nostalgia

The Fall of Assad Could End Putin, But Trump Will Rescue Him | Rage for Across the US at the Sickness-for-Profit “Healthcare” System | Musk Will Put Millions Out of Work While Making Billions Out of the Government He is Hollowing Out backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

"It's Going to Be Fun" Says Ramaswamy Who Along With Musk Will Try to Cut $2 Trillion By Targeting Social Security and Medicare | How 9/11 Made the Trump Presidency Possible and Hollowed Out the Very Idea Of Citizenship in the US backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Champion of Working Class Voters' Big Con As Trump Forms a Government Of, By and For Plutocrats | The Syria Rebels Just Blew Up Secret US-Israel-UAE Efforts to Lure Assad Away From Iran | What Trump's Pick of Feinberg as Number 2 at DOD Means For the Silicon Valley Defense Tech Takeover of the Pentagon Budget Credits backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

South Korea's President Yoon Declares Martial Law Then Has to Back Down | Trump Threatens There'll Be " All Hell To Pay in the Middle East" If Hamas Does Not Release the Hostages Before His Inauguration | Will the Apolitical Rank and File at the FBI Survive a Fanatical Pro-Trump Ideologue as Their Director? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Democrats as a Vision Starved Blob Made up of Candidates, Billionaire Donors and Data Addled Consultants | Trump Wins by Calling the System Rigged While the Democrats Remain Silent | Will the FBI Survive a Fanatical Pro-Trump Ideologue?

If the Senate Has Hearings, Hegseth, Gabbard and RFK Jr. Will Not Be Confirmed | Trump's Envoy To Ukraine General Kellogg's Plan to End the War | With Iran and Hezbollah on the Ropes, Syrian Rebels Backed By Turkey Make Surprising Gains backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

What We can Be Thankful For in These Bleak Times | How Women Can Resist and Fight Back Against a Regime of Hate and Misogyny | What We As Individuals Can Do to Resist and Overcome the Coming Darkness backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Trump Declares a Day One Trade War on China, Mexico and Canada | Tariffs on Mexico Will Not Solve Immigration or Drug Consumption in the US | An Update on the Ceasefire Deal Between Israel and Hezbollah backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

A 60 Day Ceasefire Expected Soon Between Israel and Hezbollah | With Elon Musk Musing About Buying MSNBC, We Look Into the Future of Cable TV | Christian Nationalists Make Inroads Into Indoctrinating Texas Schoolchildren

Trump's Choice to Head the DOD Sees Half the Country as the Enemy and That There Will Be Civil War | The Arrest of Coup Plotters in Brazil Who Trump Supports For a Military Takeover That Could Happen Here | Putin's Latest Nuclear Sabre Rattling as NATO Crosses Its Red Lines backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Gaetz Withdraws AG Nomination as Trump's Pentagon Choice Faces Sexual Assault Allegations | The International Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrants For Netanyahu, His Former Defense Minister and an Hamas Leader Presumed Dead | An Update on the House Vote To Give Trump the Power to Shut Down Nonprofits backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Can a MAGA Bill to Kill Nonprofits They Don't Like Disguised as an Anti-Terrorism Bill Be Stopped Tomorrow? | As Comcast Sheds MSNBC, Could Elon Musk Buy it and Turn it Into a Platform For Right Wing Trolls? | The US and NATO Are Poised For Hybrid Warfare Retaliation From Putin Now That US Missiles are Striking Russia backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Evidence of Drug Use and Underage Sex by Matt Gaetz is Cracking Open as the Senate is Soon to be Put to the Test | With the Focus on Trump's Appalling Choices, Will RFK Jr Slip By? | 45 Hong Kong Democracy Activists Jailed Under China's National Security Law backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Consequences of Biden Authorizing Missile Strikes From Ukraine Into Russia | Will the Democrats Confront the Economic Conditions That Gave Rise to Right Wing Populism?

"Trump 2.0: Here Comes The Night" | A Hari Krishna-Like Cult Member and Russian Asset in Charge of US Intelligence! | Russia's Military: It's History and It's War Today backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Trump's Choice of an Unqualified and Incompetent Ideologue to Head the DOJ Who Has Be Charged With Sex Trafficking an Underaged Girl Across State Lines | Trump's Choice of a Fox Propagandist, Grifter and Supporter of For-Profit Colleges That Rip off Veterans to be Secretary of Defense | Trump Wants a Member of a Fringe Hindu Cult and Fan of the Syrian and Russian Dictators to be the Next Head of Our Intelligence Agencies backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

It Looks Like Trump is No Longer Afraid of Being Blackmailed By Putin | Trump Shows Up at the Congress Today With His New Playmate Elon Musk | The Outsized Role the Crypto Industry Played in Electing Trump and Republicans backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Greatest Failure of Federal Law Enforcement in History Thanks to Garland, McConnell and Roberts | Senator Murphy Agrees With Bernie That Democrats Have Abandoned the Working Class | Saudi Arabia and Iran Get Closer in Anticipation of a Trump Presidency backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Too Little Too Late, Biden is Finally Ready to Stand Up to Israel | On Veterans Day, Will We Have Trump Wars and More American Veterans? | We are Entering America's Strongman Era backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

With the Blame Game Underway, the Democrats Need to Focus on Accountability and a Coherent Strategy | The Failure of the Legal System to Bring a Career Criminal to Justice Before he Took Over the World | The Global Implications of the Enormous Power Trump Will Wield backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

With Republicans Needing 7 and Democrats Needing 15 Seats to Flip the House, Will Trump End Up With the Trifecta of White House, Senate and House? | The Frightening and Less Frightening Contenders for Trump's White House and Cabinet Positions | Democrats Have Joined the Global Trend of Left and Social Democratic Parties Losing to the Far Right backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia