July 21, 2025 – Background Briefing

Background Briefing: July 21, 2025

On July 21, 2025 By admin

We begin with the real reason Trump is suing Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal which is to force them to reveal the source of the leak of Epstein’s 50th birthday greeting book in which Trump drew a pornographic picture with a short, imagined dialogue between Epstein and Trump —“We have certain things in common, Jeffrey” and “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” Trump ends with a wish that “every day be another wonderful secret.” Joining us is James Zirin, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and the host of the critically acclaimed television talk show, Conversations with Jim Zirin, which airs on PBS. He is the author of Supremely Partisan: How Raw Politics Tips the Scales in the United States Supreme Court and Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits. He is a contributing editor at The Washington Monthly and his latest article at The Hill we discuss is, “’Another wonderful secret’: What’s going on with Trump and the Epstein files?”

Then with Trump triumphant at CBS’s firing of Stephen Colbert which he surely played a role in, we look into how he is now going after Jimmy Kimmel in the hope of ending America’s tradition of political satire, taunting the ghosts of H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain. Joining us is Jacques Berlinerblau, a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. He has authored numerous books about the subject of secularism, including the recent Secularism: The Basics. He has also written about American higher education in Campus Confidential: How College Works, and Doesn’t, For Professors, Parents and Students. With Professor Terrence Johnson, he is a co-author of Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue. His current research concentrates on the nexus between literature and comedy on the one side and cultural conflicts on the other. His forthcoming books are As Professors Lay Dying: Selecting a College Amidst an Educational Crisis and We Can’t Laugh at That: Comedic Controversies in a Conflicted Age. We discuss his article at MSNBC, “The cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ is a warning for comedy’s future.”

Then finally we speak with Sidney Blumenthal, the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for The Washington Post, Washington editor and staff writer for The New Yorker and his books include the bestsellers The Clinton Wars, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment and The Permanent Campaign. His latest book is All the Powers on Earth, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln 1856-1860, and we discuss his latest article at The Guardian, “Trump cannot dispel the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein” and the three horsemen of the apocalypse running America and driving us into a hellscape, Trump, Stephen Miller and Russell Vought.