Day: July 13, 2025

Could a Top Trump Official Who Lied About Being Born in the Soviet Union be a Russian Plant? 

We begin with the latest revelations in the suspicious case of the top Trump official in charge of vetting the 4,000 who have been appointed to the executive branch in the second Trump administration. Sergio Gor has avoided being vetted himself by refusing to fill out the requisite forms and has been evasive about where he was born, claiming Malta as his birthplace when it has now been determined he was born in the Soviet Union. Joining from the organization, along with a Maltese newspaper, which uncovered Sergio Gorokhovsky’s background and his possible ties to Russian intelligence is Kevin Hall, the Washington, D.C.-based North America Editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project overseeing investigations in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Previously, he spent nearly 22 years at McClatchy and the Miami Herald, as the Brazil-based South America bureau chief, a chief economics correspondent and a senior investigative reporter. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2010 for his reporting on the origins of the U.S. financial crisis and shared the 2017 Pulitzer Prize as a lead U.S. partner in the Panama Papers. He has a new report at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project we discuss, “Exclusive: Top Trump Adviser Sergio Gor Was Born in the Soviet Union.”

Trump Slashes Soft Power While Adding a $Trillion to Fighting a Nuclear War That Can Only Be Prevented by Diplomacy

Then following Friday’s purge of the State Department with mass firings of up to 3,400 personnel, we speak with Ambassador Cynthia Schneider, a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University, co-director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown and the Timbuktu Renaissance, a Mali-based platform for countering extremism and promoting peace and development through a focus on culture. From 1998-2001, she served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, during which time she led initiatives in cultural diplomacy, biotechnology, cyber security, and education. We discuss the slashing of soft power while Trump adds a trillion dollars to a nuclear buildup to fight a war that cannot be won and can only be prevented by diplomacy.

Trump Slaps a 50% Tariff on Brazil Along With 35% on Canada and 30% on the EU and Mexico

Then finally we go to Brazil to speak with James Green, the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Professor of Modern Latin American History and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University. The author or co-editor of eleven books on Brazil and Latin America, he is the past president of the Brazilian Studies Association and he has traveled extensively throughout Latin America and lived eight years in Brazil. We discuss the 50% tariffs Trump just slapped on Brazil along with 35% on Canada and 30% on the EU and Mexico.