Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And after the Jacksonville shooting, Joe Biden
Speaker 1: says white supremacy has no place in America, a stark
Speaker 1: contrast to our previous president. We have such a show
Speaker 1: packed with amazing guests. New Yorker writer Susan Glasser joins
Speaker 1: us to talk about where Russia is headed after the
Speaker 1: death of yet another Putin Foe. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: Strongman author Ruth ben Giatt and the Gopiece continued march
Speaker 1: towards authoritarianism. But first we have Washington Post columnist and
Speaker 1: close personal friend George Conway. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: My friend George Conway.
Speaker 2: How fast are your politics?
Speaker 1: Lobely, They're very fast, and it'll be very fast if
Speaker 1: you listen to this at one point seven speed, which
Speaker 1: I highly recommend.
Speaker 3: I listen to.
Speaker 1: All my podcasts at one in seven five, which makes
Speaker 1: everyone sound like mini mouse.
Speaker 3: But it's great, Gus exactly. Let's go. George Conway.
Speaker 2: You're a lawyer, last night check, Yeah, I am, I
Speaker 2: gotta do. I gotta do my continuing legal education in
Speaker 2: the next like six days in order to maintain my
Speaker 2: bar membership. But you know, other than that, things are
Speaker 2: really well.
Speaker 1: I know yesterday was like all mugshot. He really did
Speaker 1: plan this completely right. Nobody is talking about that GOP
Speaker 1: debate anymore. It's just mugshot. Mugshot, mudshot. If you were
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's lawyer, what would you tell him?
Speaker 2: Who's lawyer?
Speaker 3: Forty five forty known?
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, you're referring to PO one one three
Speaker 2: five eighth nine. Yes. Yeah. If I were Bolton County
Speaker 2: Jail inmate number PO one one three five eight oh
Speaker 2: nines attorney, I would ask for a seven million dollars
Speaker 2: up retainer, and assuming I got that, I would I'd
Speaker 2: be happy to send him and give him lengal advice.
Speaker 3: What would you tell him, though?
Speaker 2: I would tell him to throw himself at the mercy
Speaker 2: of Jack Smith, Letitia, James Alvin Bragg and Fannie Willis
Speaker 2: and try to cut the best deal he can and
Speaker 2: promise to go away and never be heard from it again,
Speaker 2: because that, I think is the only There are only
Speaker 2: two ways that he could avoid dying in prison, and
Speaker 2: one would be to get himself elected president of the
Speaker 2: United States, which I think is a very low probability event,
Speaker 2: but would be calamitous or of the country and the planet,
Speaker 2: and would only happen if some crazy third party candidate
Speaker 2: managed to siphen sufficient votes away from the principal major
Speaker 2: party candidate right p zero one, one, three, five, eight oh.
Speaker 3: Nine aka no layables.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the only other way he can get out of
Speaker 2: it is by cutting some kind of deal, and maywhell
Speaker 2: be too late to do that. He has very various
Speaker 2: new cards to play at this point. He can't really
Speaker 2: buy his way out, except maybe he could pay a
Speaker 2: tremendous tremendous buying buying like nobody has ever seen a
Speaker 2: fine that When people would say sir, they would say
Speaker 2: with tears in their eyes, they would say, sir, we
Speaker 2: have never seen a colossal fine like that. It just
Speaker 2: we are in amazement of your ability to pay restitution.
Speaker 2: It's just awesome, sir. I don't think that's going to
Speaker 2: be worth a lot here. I do think that one
Speaker 2: of the things that a criminal defendant who is in
Speaker 2: public life has as a chip to play, and I
Speaker 2: think there are numerous examples of this in history, and
Speaker 2: in fact, it's recognized in the Department of Justice is
Speaker 2: manual that one of the objects of prosecutions in the
Speaker 2: public corruption sphere is to get the corrupt people out
Speaker 2: of office and out of public life. If he actually
Speaker 2: offered to leave public life and never be heard from again,
Speaker 2: I you know, maybe move to I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 2: Putin has a nice daha ready for him in the crimea.
Speaker 3: But you think that if he did that he would
Speaker 3: get off.
Speaker 2: I don't know that he can do that, and I
Speaker 2: don't know that he would get off, but it is
Speaker 2: I think other than destroying the world and getting himself
Speaker 2: elected president and destroying democracy and the constitution I think,
Speaker 2: which I don't think he's going to be able to do,
Speaker 2: because I think he's going to become increasingly unstable as
Speaker 2: time goes on. And even though there's going to be
Speaker 2: half of the Republican Party at least that will voke
Speaker 2: for him, no matter what, I don't think there's going
Speaker 2: to be enough to win a general election unless something
Speaker 2: very very very very screwing happens in American politics, which could,
Speaker 2: which which could, but I think it's a likely I
Speaker 2: think that's his only play. The problem is he should
Speaker 2: have played that a long time ago. He wouldn't play
Speaker 2: that alone time ago because he's never going to play it.
Speaker 2: He's not capable of it, because that would be an
Speaker 2: act of submission. And when narcissistic psychopaths megalomaniacs get past
Speaker 2: a certain point, they'll just try to take everyone down
Speaker 2: with them. I mean, our best ehiple of that is Hitler,
Speaker 2: who was kind of the quintessential narcissistic psychopath. In fact,
Speaker 2: he's the psychiatrist or psychologist Eric from, very famous writer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know who is.
Speaker 2: I think he was a survivor of the Holocaust and
Speaker 2: he's trying to figure out like, what is this? What
Speaker 2: is this mental disorder that causes people to be so destructive?
Speaker 2: And E coined the term liligant narcissism, and it reflects basically,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, you don't have to be a
Speaker 2: mass murderer to be a milligan narcissist, right right, right,
Speaker 2: And this guy certainly is. And when they get past
Speaker 2: a certain point, when they achieve a certain amount of power,
Speaker 2: there's just no turning back. They can't let go and
Speaker 2: they can't stop. They can't control themselves. And that's part
Speaker 2: of the reason why he's running he's just he just
Speaker 2: can't stop himself. And there's also a bit of rationality
Speaker 2: in there. He knows that his only ticket to freedom
Speaker 2: in deep Town. He knows his only ticket of freedom
Speaker 2: that he is willing to take is to get himself
Speaker 2: elected president, which has the added benefit of being able
Speaker 2: to allow him in his own line to seek vengeance
Speaker 2: upon all of us who are going to have to
Speaker 2: move to Canada or New Zealand. I could take New Zealand.
Speaker 2: In Canada.
Speaker 1: You said to me, this party is done, it's fucked,
Speaker 1: it's over. It's the Whigs. It's going to have to
Speaker 1: burn down in order to come back. And I was
Speaker 1: thinking about was watching that debate and watching Nikki Haley,
Speaker 1: who is on Earth One. I mean, the stuff she
Speaker 1: was saying. I was like, oh my god, there's a
Speaker 1: Republican saying stuff that is actually like, you know, she
Speaker 1: was saying, Trump can't get elected.
Speaker 2: Watching that debate and I only made it through about
Speaker 2: two thirsty three quarters of it, after which I decided
Speaker 2: that I was losing too many brain cells, which is
Speaker 2: what happens when you heard on Fox News, so I
Speaker 2: turned it off. I was profoundly disoriented. Yeah, A Celestial
Speaker 2: Way because I was watching that and wondering what planet
Speaker 2: and aisle and what planet are they? Because I started
Speaker 2: watching this and there was basically other than Nikki Haley
Speaker 2: taking a shot at Trump running up the nationals at
Speaker 2: which I really love.
Speaker 1: Right, which I don't know who that's for, but I
Speaker 1: appreciated it too.
Speaker 2: It is for George Conway, who actually cares about fiscal responsibility.
Speaker 3: Only person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like it, really, you know, like one of
Speaker 2: five people in the United States, you know, and Pete
Speaker 2: Peterson and has this group or somebody you know, Nobody
Speaker 2: ever listens to them, right, We all want to run,
Speaker 2: we all have credit cards that like to spend money.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so I'm watching this and for the first
Speaker 2: fifty seven minutes, literally fifty seven minutes I checked, there
Speaker 2: was virtually no mention of Donald Trump. And I'm watching
Speaker 2: this and I'm saying, yeah, and then there are a
Speaker 2: couple of there's Salooney Tunes stuff going on. The vec
Speaker 2: is a nut.
Speaker 3: Job for Veke it rhymes with cake.
Speaker 2: Oh. I thought it was like the Veka is a
Speaker 2: Vivek section, which is what no Paley did to him later.
Speaker 2: But anyway, and we have DeSantis, who clearly has some
Speaker 2: I am not sure if he's human. I can't figure
Speaker 2: out exactly what species he is, or maybe he's just
Speaker 2: a bot.
Speaker 3: His terrible can today.
Speaker 2: Right, there's always weirdness in American politics. I'm back on
Speaker 2: old Earth. Even when the Republican Party was almost normal,
Speaker 2: we had strange politicians, and you know, Democrats had strange politicians,
Speaker 2: and we had strange into you know, we had Lyndon
Speaker 2: LaRouche out.
Speaker 3: There, right, Lyndon Laruge I remember him.
Speaker 2: You get the wackos. So it's fine. I could take that.
Speaker 2: But the rest of it was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: They were talking about policy. Oh, we need to cut
Speaker 2: the budget, we need to reduce the size of government.
Speaker 2: And that's great. I love that stuff because you know
Speaker 2: that's I grew up on that stuff on Earth one
Speaker 2: and on Earth one. No, it's partly bullshit because nobody
Speaker 2: actually ever says what they want to cut. Because if
Speaker 2: you actually say what you want to cut, people get mad.
Speaker 3: It's wildly unpopular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, I like the sentiment. It's like it's like
Speaker 2: the old days. It made me feel like the Earth
Speaker 2: I grew up on, and it was actually sucking me
Speaker 2: in a letter. I'm saying, oh, this is so nice.
Speaker 2: They're speaking classic political platitudes about the need to cut
Speaker 2: government and so on and so forth. And then fifty
Speaker 2: seven minutes passes, and then the moderators finally decide we
Speaker 2: have to talk about Trump between now and the next
Speaker 2: commercial break. In the next forty five seconds, What do
Speaker 2: you think of Donald Trump?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: And they asked the question, right, They asked that very
Speaker 2: good question. Would you support Donald Trump even if he
Speaker 2: were a convicted felon in somestance six and a half
Speaker 2: in Christie, I don't know what tell Christy was doing
Speaker 2: with his hand, said yes. And I'm like, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, it's like I'm looking at these people
Speaker 2: and they're no longer on this planet that I like,
Speaker 2: right back on Earth, the earth I grew up on.
Speaker 2: You don't vote for criminals.
Speaker 3: Whose mugshot is being released the next day.
Speaker 2: You don't vote for somebody who has been found by
Speaker 2: a judge and jury in a federal district court, the
Speaker 2: United States District Court for the Southern District of New
Speaker 2: York to be a rapist. You don't vote for that
Speaker 2: kind of person. You say, that's a bad person. And
Speaker 2: then the other people run ads say look at how
Speaker 2: bad my opponent is, and the guy gets trounced. That's
Speaker 2: what should happen on a nice planet. What planet are
Speaker 2: these people? And they realize they're on my planet. They
Speaker 2: are on my planet, and that's the problem. This is
Speaker 2: the planet we have that they've created. And these people
Speaker 2: are actually going to the people who are out in
Speaker 2: the audience hooting and hollering for Trump and then booing
Speaker 2: anybody who says, you know, Trump may have done something wrong.
Speaker 2: I mean, those people they're insisting on making as their
Speaker 2: standard bearer in twenty twenty four a man who will
Speaker 2: die in prison in all likelihood. After a bunch of that,
Speaker 2: I left and I was thinking, I don't know what
Speaker 2: planet and I'm on and I can't take any more
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 1: There was some polling release today three and five say
Speaker 1: Trump's sensitive documents and twenty twenty elections subversion trial should
Speaker 1: happen before November twenty four, and of that sixty one
Speaker 1: percent of all Americans. I mean, that seems like bad
Speaker 1: news for the Republican nomine Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really do not think it's possible for PO one one, three,
Speaker 2: five eighth nine to find himself back in the White House,
Speaker 2: with the exception that if you have some kind of
Speaker 2: a screwball no labels candidate that somehow manages to steal
Speaker 2: fifty thousand votes from Joe Biden or one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: votes in each of a certain number of particular states.
Speaker 1: Swingy states, like it would be an electoral college.
Speaker 2: When right, you could come in second in a popular
Speaker 2: vote and win two hundred and seventy one elector vote
Speaker 2: electural vote, in which case it's you know again, as
Speaker 2: I say, it's basically the end of the world. So
Speaker 2: that's the reason why I feel overall optimistic, is that
Speaker 2: I just think that, you know, he, as I said
Speaker 2: the other day on oneing Joe P three five eight
Speaker 2: oh nine is playing Russian Roulette with the law and
Speaker 2: he's loading all the chambers. Is that there's just no
Speaker 2: way he should be able to get past all this,
Speaker 2: whether or not any of the trials occur before November
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, but I do think at least one
Speaker 2: or two of them will, So I think he's got
Speaker 2: a big problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, besides having five indictments being highly stressful.
Speaker 2: For where we're not a five yet, well.
Speaker 3: Five because we have a superseding indictment.
Speaker 1: So oh, we two federal, two state, and then the superseding.
Speaker 3: Four and a half.
Speaker 2: When I lived, the Trump World Tower was a seventy
Speaker 2: two story building, but they labeled the top floor ninety
Speaker 2: because he skipped a bunch of So I'm all four
Speaker 2: saying five indictments. In fact, I'll say seven.
Speaker 1: Let's just say four and a half. But logistically this
Speaker 1: is a scheduling nightmare. Not for me, but I mean
Speaker 1: for the courts. The courts are not set up in
Speaker 1: a way.
Speaker 2: But it's not courts problem.
Speaker 3: Well, it is Donald Trump's problem. Yes, it's p O.
Speaker 2: One, one, three, five, eight h Nine's problem because he's
Speaker 2: the one who has to defend all these cases. Okay,
Speaker 2: if I'm a judge, I can just order a trial date.
Speaker 2: And if somebody says, oh, I have to be in
Speaker 2: Iowa to you know, milk some cows, I'll just look
Speaker 2: at them and say, what.
Speaker 5: Is your problem?
Speaker 2: You know this defendant behind you in the next case,
Speaker 2: the robber, the suspect, I ain't letting him milk, no cows.
Speaker 2: He's over at the MCC you know, the county jail
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. I just don't see that. So
Speaker 2: who goes first? Do you think Jack Smith goes first?
Speaker 2: I think it will be one or both of the
Speaker 2: federal trials are most likely to go first. In New York,
Speaker 2: DA Bragg has said that he will give up his
Speaker 2: trial date if necessary because he's he's willing to facilitate
Speaker 2: the other trials because he understands that his case isn't
Speaker 2: quite as significant from the historical or legal standpoint as
Speaker 2: the other cases. So that's very good of him. And
Speaker 2: you know, and the New York is slow anyway.
Speaker 4: And it's the least sort of structural case, right, Judges
Speaker 4: are entitled to call each other. I usually it happens
Speaker 4: in a federal court house. But there's no reason why
Speaker 4: these things can't be scheduled so that they don't all conflict.
Speaker 4: Because yes, I mean, a criminal defendant does have the right,
Speaker 4: within certain limits, to be president a trial. In fact,
Speaker 4: it is required generally.
Speaker 2: Now, you know, he's got these other cases, like the
Speaker 2: second civil trial in the rape case, which is now
Speaker 2: just the defamation case because he's already been found to
Speaker 2: be a rapist. Is this case is about the defamation
Speaker 2: that that he did after p one one three five
Speaker 2: to eight OHO nine committed when he was president p
Speaker 2: One one three five eight ZO nine. But he doesn't
Speaker 2: have to show up for that. And I actually think
Speaker 2: there's a good chance that our friend Egene is going
Speaker 2: to get summary judgment on that and that there'll be
Speaker 2: no trial.
Speaker 3: So what does that mean she just gets the money.
Speaker 2: There will have to be a trial in damages, and
Speaker 2: I don't you know, he didn't show up for the
Speaker 2: first one where you was a used a rape sexual assault.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have anything to say about the damage to
Speaker 2: Jean's reputation that he caused when he was president of
Speaker 2: the United States and defends her, so he doesn't have
Speaker 2: to go to that trial. The other trial that he's
Speaker 2: got coming up is another civil trial, which is a
Speaker 2: class action in the Southern District of New York for
Speaker 2: the Ponzi scheme that he participated in along with Monkey,
Speaker 2: where he basically ran these ads during the apprentice where
Speaker 2: you say, you send us money and you'll get money back,
Speaker 2: and it was this weird kind of thing it was,
Speaker 2: but it was basically what they call a multi level
Speaker 2: marketing scheme where you know, sooner or later somebody gets
Speaker 2: holding the bag and they don't have any money and
Speaker 2: a la signor Ponzi is how you're saying in Italian.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but George Conway, will you come back?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd come back. I have a whole riffa I
Speaker 2: wanted to do.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're coming back. I have a feeling Trump is
Speaker 3: going to have more legal troubles.
Speaker 1: Susan Glasser is a writer The New Yorker and author
Speaker 1: of Divider Trump in the White House. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Susan Glasser.
Speaker 3: Great to be with you, Mollie.
Speaker 1: I'm so delighted to have you because everything that's happening
Speaker 1: falls into your skill set. First, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about what's happening in Russia. Because you lived in Moscow,
Speaker 1: you and Peter lived in Moscow. You have seen the
Speaker 1: rise of Putin, and now another chapter emerges.
Speaker 3: What is happening over there?
Speaker 5: Obviously you now have what appears to be the outright
Speaker 5: assassination of You have Guinny Progosian, who emerges in some
Speaker 5: ways the kind of most visible serious threat to the
Speaker 5: Kremlins monopoly on state power. You know, in the entire
Speaker 5: twenty years of Putin's time in office, and you know
Speaker 5: to me, it's all part of the spillover effect of
Speaker 5: this disastrous war in Ukraine that Putin has unleashed. And
Speaker 5: you know, I don't see think any of this would
Speaker 5: have been happening if it weren't for that Russia is
Speaker 5: isolated in the world. It is absorbing, if you believe
Speaker 5: research reports in the New York Times, extraordinary amounts of
Speaker 5: casualties in this conflict, more than one hundred thousand dead
Speaker 5: and injured Russians. This is just an incredible number. By
Speaker 5: the way, at least officially, more than the number of
Speaker 5: Russian two were allegedly killed in the entire Soviet Afghan conflict,
Speaker 5: which lasted a decade.
Speaker 3: Again, those are probably suspect numbers.
Speaker 5: But the point, and I think that's a really important point,
Speaker 5: is that Vladimir Putin, almost single handedly, he had the
Speaker 5: power to do so on his own, made.
Speaker 3: This decision to unleash the biggest.
Speaker 5: Land war in Europe since the end of World War Two.
Speaker 3: And it's not going well for Russia.
Speaker 5: And so I think it's all in the context of
Speaker 5: that that this extraordinary PREGOTIONI saga played out.
Speaker 1: It's such an interesting problem that Russia finds itself in
Speaker 1: do you think Russia is sort of the same as
Speaker 1: North Korea or China, Like we don't get really accurate
Speaker 1: reporting out of the country because there are so few
Speaker 1: members of the free press still there.
Speaker 5: I think it's been very, very hard and very opaque
Speaker 5: to understand the kind of high politics of this era,
Speaker 5: right that what's really going on among Putin and his
Speaker 5: ever shrinking inner circle. Right these are mostly people drawn
Speaker 5: from the security services by all accounts, and Western intelligence
Speaker 5: has been pretty public about this and seeing that they
Speaker 5: believe Putin has consulted with a smaller and smaller circle
Speaker 5: of advisors, especially during COVID, but not exclusively so and
Speaker 5: so you know, I think that the robustness of our
Speaker 5: interactions with this system have just atrophied over the years.
Speaker 5: In some ways, we knew a lot more about the
Speaker 5: late Soviet era when when Gorbachev was in power, and
Speaker 5: where many were closer in some ways to senior officials
Speaker 5: in Gorbachev's Kremlin than we are, certainly to those in
Speaker 5: Putent's kremlin.
Speaker 3: Number one.
Speaker 5: Oh, yes, we don't really know what's going on. I
Speaker 5: think North Korea is a more extreme case still, But
Speaker 5: the fear is that Putin is hurtling Russia down the
Speaker 5: track of becoming a sort of European North Korea, which
Speaker 5: would be a disaster for so many reasons. It's a bigger,
Speaker 5: more significant country, and its role in the world supermanent
Speaker 5: member of the UN Security Council is a very different one.
Speaker 5: It's just it's a disastrous scenario all around. But I
Speaker 5: do think I should say, you saw those images of
Speaker 5: that plane that purportedly had promotion on board, plummeting out
Speaker 5: of the sky.
Speaker 3: Message sent message.
Speaker 5: See the message is strength, and Putin is always believed
Speaker 5: in intimidating, unsettled, overwhelming displays of force and often went
Speaker 5: back into a corner. That's what he does, is he escalates,
Speaker 5: He looks for opportunities to send a message. And it's
Speaker 5: very interesting somebody I was on TV and somebody asked
Speaker 5: me this question, a very American kind of question in
Speaker 5: a way to this set of events in Russian said, well,
Speaker 5: you know, would Russians be upset if this action was
Speaker 5: really pinned on the Kremlin? And I thought, you know,
Speaker 5: it's almost the exact opposite. I think by the logic
Speaker 5: of Putin's Russia, which is we want you to get
Speaker 5: the message that if you betray us, this is what
Speaker 5: will happen to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Progosian was a bad dude. He rose to
Speaker 1: power in this Putin world through really the most deplorable
Speaker 1: kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, he was a murderer, He was a thug. He
Speaker 5: came out of a sort of criminal background in Saint
Speaker 5: Petersburg and was patronized by Vladimir Putin. His success was
Speaker 5: a result of the opportunities that came to him by
Speaker 5: being in Vladimir Putin's orbit. And it's the diffusion of
Speaker 5: the state and the sort of criminal elements surrounding it
Speaker 5: that has been one of the very negative, unfortunate aspects
Speaker 5: that defined the Putin era in Russia, and Progosian was
Speaker 5: sort of a symbol of that. Of course, many Americans
Speaker 5: first heard of him not so much in the context
Speaker 5: of the Wagner Group as mercenary force that he created
Speaker 5: and led, but in the context of his role as
Speaker 5: Putin's chef quote unquote and the creation of the Internet
Speaker 5: Research Agency that's documented in the famous Mueller Report. But
Speaker 5: he played a particularly pernicious role as a sort of
Speaker 5: executor and carrier out of schemes that Russia, for a
Speaker 5: variety of reasons, wanted to maintain plausible deniability for even
Speaker 5: though of course it wasn't all that plausible and all
Speaker 5: that deniable. They used progosion and the Vagner Group as
Speaker 5: an unofficial arm of the Russian state, embroiled in conflicts
Speaker 5: in Africa, in Syria, Ukraine, and read my colleague Joshua Yafa,
Speaker 5: it did a terrific kind of after action, you know,
Speaker 5: history of progotion in the Vomitor group in the New
Speaker 5: York a few weeks ago. I highly recommend I.
Speaker 1: Want to pull back for a minute on Russia, because
Speaker 1: there is this war in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: It continues.
Speaker 1: We don't know how well Russia is doing, though it
Speaker 1: certainly the sense is not that well. Russia is a
Speaker 1: problem if it remains under Putin, but it's also really
Speaker 1: a problem if it doesn't well.
Speaker 5: And for many years Mali, for many years, that's what
Speaker 5: many Russia watchers heard, is like, oh, well, you know
Speaker 5: you don't like Putin, but it'll be even worse. So
Speaker 5: he's just holding back the really crazy extreme forces, the
Speaker 5: kind of people, the military bloggers who have.
Speaker 3: Been demanding even more.
Speaker 5: And brutal actions in Ukraine, for example, And so that
Speaker 5: for a long time was the weird argument that was advanced,
Speaker 5: kind of pro Putin argument in the West, with like
Speaker 5: after him the deluge. But of course now Putin has
Speaker 5: gone ahead and done, you know, pretty much the worst
Speaker 5: thing you can do. And you think about the millions
Speaker 5: of lives up ended and destroyed by this catastrophic war
Speaker 5: in Ukraine. You think of hundreds of thousands of casualties
Speaker 5: on both sides. You think of mass roundups and deportations
Speaker 5: of Ukrainian children and families to Russia against their will.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's just it's criminality upon criminality. That the
Speaker 5: horrible tortures in Bhusa were not an exception, but you know,
Speaker 5: a part of the Russian playbook in this war of extermination.
Speaker 5: And so I think the question that many people have
Speaker 5: right now, and I think it's a very important one,
Speaker 5: is a different question. It's not well, g well, there'd
Speaker 5: be some terrible person after Putin, which is certainly a
Speaker 5: very likely scenario, But because it's so associated with being
Speaker 5: Putin's war, is it's still nonetheless more possible to end
Speaker 5: the war, even if the person who follows Putin into
Speaker 5: the Kremlin is an extreme right wing National List he
Speaker 5: and it will be a he. There are basically no
Speaker 5: women in the upper echelons of power in Russia. Day
Speaker 5: he is nonetheless possibly could end the war if you look.
Speaker 5: It's almost inconceivable, right that Ukraine, Vladimir Zelenski or any
Speaker 5: American president not named Donald Trump would actually make a
Speaker 5: deal with Putin that results in the end of the war.
Speaker 5: I feel that that's inconceivable. However, it often is the
Speaker 5: person who doesn't start the war who ends up having
Speaker 5: to end a war, whether that's in the Soviet Union,
Speaker 5: it was Brezhnev who and his colleagues who agreed to
Speaker 5: invade Afghanistan. It was Gorbatov who decided to end it.
Speaker 5: It was Nixon, not LBJ who ended Vietnam. That's history
Speaker 5: strongly suggests that nobody's going to be sitting down in
Speaker 5: some parish peace talks with Vladimir Putin insign dot line.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's also the question of instability, right, this is a
Speaker 1: huge country with nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3: That could be anybody's guest.
Speaker 1: What happens in Russia has been notoriously unable to has
Speaker 1: had trouble stabilizing itself.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: In fact, Maley One of the kind of periodive horribles
Speaker 5: that US and other Western officials have long worried about
Speaker 5: is the possibility of the disintegration of the Russian state,
Speaker 5: the fragmentation, the further fragmentation.
Speaker 3: Of the Russian state.
Speaker 5: In many ways, that was part of how Putin came
Speaker 5: to power by promising people that this era of instability
Speaker 5: and possible disintegration inside Russia was going to come to
Speaker 5: an end. That Russia fought not one but two wars
Speaker 5: with a breakaway province of Chechnya after the collapse of
Speaker 5: the Soviet Union, and there were constant, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of palpable fears played upon by Putin and other Russian
Speaker 5: nationalists throughout the nineteen nineties. Things fall apart, right, you
Speaker 5: know that Boris Yelton had gone too far in encouraging
Speaker 5: individual regions in Russia to take autonomy and Putin that
Speaker 5: was what we witnessed when we were there in the
Speaker 5: early years of Vladimir Putin's tenure, as he was sort
Speaker 5: of consolidating power, and that was what he said to
Speaker 5: the Russian people, is like, I will stop this kind
Speaker 5: of civil war. So that's part of the fear scenario.
Speaker 5: I think in Washington and other Western capitals. Is that
Speaker 5: a defeat in Ukraine or even a bad piece could
Speaker 5: lead to further fragmentation and destabilization of Russia.
Speaker 1: Right, we have this pretty scary situation happening over seas,
Speaker 1: and the idea here is that it's the protection of
Speaker 1: NATO countries. I don't think anyone puts it past, putin
Speaker 1: to roll in past, you know, into Poland. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not impossible, but we have in America it seems
Speaker 1: very much that the appetite for intervention is as low
Speaker 1: as I've ever seen it, and with Republican candidates it's
Speaker 1: even lower than that. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about this sea change?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you're right. We have just moved into
Speaker 5: a different era. I don't know that we have a
Speaker 5: name for it yet. Very interesting because it's certainly a recognition.
Speaker 5: I think that the unipolar kind of single superpower moment
Speaker 5: in which the United States was this kind of dominant
Speaker 5: player on the world stage in the immediate aftermath of
Speaker 5: the collass suit Union, that that period is now definitively over,
Speaker 5: with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan just basically sapped.
Speaker 5: I think the interest across the political spectrum inside the
Speaker 5: United States in what people now perceive to be a
Speaker 5: kind of international adventurism. Certainly, the war in Iraq, even
Speaker 5: in Republican Party, is largely not supported as a decision.
Speaker 5: That being said, what's remarkable and enduring given all that
Speaker 5: has been this US both sympathy and support for Ukraine
Speaker 5: and a level of backing of Ukraine in its fight
Speaker 5: with Russia and beating back Russian aggression that almost has
Speaker 5: no precedent in history. I don't know how much people
Speaker 5: really realize the billions I've done that the US is
Speaker 5: giving right now. I've just been been looking this up
Speaker 5: as part of a bigger piece. I'm ready for the
Speaker 5: New Yorker magazine, and we're running essentially in inflation adjusted
Speaker 5: terms head even of the extraordinary mounts that the US
Speaker 5: invested in the Marshall Plan in the three years following
Speaker 5: World War Two. That's how big of a commitment we've
Speaker 5: made to Ukraine. Now, of course, we're a huge and
Speaker 5: rich country. We have an enormous defense budget. It's a
Speaker 5: very small overall percentage of that defense budget that we're
Speaker 5: spending on Ukraine. So it depends on how you look
Speaker 5: at it. But it's still a bigger commitment to Ukraine
Speaker 5: than any analogy you can think of in the last
Speaker 5: one hundred years, and I include Vietnam and all the others.
Speaker 5: So it's pretty amasy.
Speaker 1: And when you look at this Republican field and you
Speaker 1: look at sort of Biden has stayed the course and
Speaker 1: been very steady, but you could see a Republican Party that,
Speaker 1: especially with the Senate map, that pushes against you know,
Speaker 1: and again I think we're about to see the government
Speaker 1: shut down on this very not sending aid to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: There will be come to Jesus moment here.
Speaker 5: I think, well, Milly, I happen to agree with you,
Speaker 5: and I have been noting with great interests. How and
Speaker 5: perhaps they don't have any other choice. But the Biden
Speaker 5: administration has been pretty sanguine and confident that they could
Speaker 5: keep getting more funding and more support for the war
Speaker 5: in Ukraine, given that the overall deterioration of the politics.
Speaker 5: The ascended faction in the Republican Party to day, no
Speaker 5: question is the trumpest Magaist faction. It is not a majority, right.
Speaker 5: I think what we saw we saw again the other
Speaker 5: night in the Republican debate is that the Republican Party
Speaker 5: is a party divided over Ukraine. It's in conflict over
Speaker 5: this issue. There are amazing strong voices who are now
Speaker 5: amplifying and echoing Trump's bizarre and inexplicable admiration for Vladimir
Speaker 5: Putin and by extension, adopting rumps and Russian talking points
Speaker 5: about the war. Ukraine isn't really a legitimate state, and
Speaker 5: you know, we shouldn't be investing in it. We're somehow
Speaker 5: getting ripped off, et cetera, et cetera. That's real, and
Speaker 5: it's growing, and sure, the polls are sort of all
Speaker 5: over the map, but essentially show a kind of waning
Speaker 5: of support over time. For now, the Senate Republicans remain
Speaker 5: pretty strongly committed to this.
Speaker 3: If anything, they.
Speaker 5: Criticized Biden from the other direction not doing it not
Speaker 5: fast enough. I think the trend line is pretty clear
Speaker 5: and should be concerning for anyone who's realizing that the
Speaker 5: war is not going to magically be over on our
Speaker 5: political calendar here in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so true. I listened to the podcast you
Speaker 3: guys do.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan, but this moment that we're in, can
Speaker 1: you give me a sort of historical precedent for this,
Speaker 1: like or something.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to.
Speaker 1: Match because obviously nothing matches this, but a moment where
Speaker 1: you feel like there's the same sort of Mesanzene, there's
Speaker 1: the same kind of feeling.
Speaker 5: Well, by the way, thank you for listening, Molly, because
Speaker 5: you are the you know, sort of the definition of
Speaker 5: premium excellence in podcasting. But it's fun for me actually
Speaker 5: to talk each week with my colleagues Janewaere and Evan
Speaker 5: Aso's because they're like, they have so much incredible variety
Speaker 5: of experience, right It's like, you know, we'll be talking
Speaker 5: about something and Jane will be like, well, you know
Speaker 5: when I was covering the Reagan White House. You know,
Speaker 5: there's like Evan at a moment when we're so interested in,
Speaker 5: you know, the rise of China as a you know.
Speaker 3: Adversary and competitor of the United States. You know, he's
Speaker 3: he's just.
Speaker 5: Happened to have lived there and written a National Book
Speaker 5: award winning book about China. But the question we often
Speaker 5: struggle with actually is this question of how to contextualize
Speaker 5: and to understand this historical moment. You know, where are
Speaker 5: we kind of like maybe getting too amped up or
Speaker 5: too hysterical, and it falls within the realm of what's
Speaker 5: happened before in American politics and what's really unprecedented, right,
Speaker 5: like what's truly crazy, like dial it up to ten,
Speaker 5: like man the battle stations, like democracies at risk, and
Speaker 5: what is kind of awful and annoying. And Ikeyan nonetheless
Speaker 5: resonates with other periods like the mccarsey era or god forbid,
Speaker 5: the eighteen fifties leaning up to a real rift in
Speaker 5: the country. I do think that, certainly in the foreign
Speaker 5: policy conversation we're having, there are some real echoes of
Speaker 5: that period leading up to World War II, or the
Speaker 5: interwar period from the end of World War One to
Speaker 5: the beginning of US involvement in World War Two. Late
Speaker 5: the actual name America firstures by these debates about what
Speaker 5: kind of power we would be in the world. At
Speaker 5: that time, of course, in America was arising ascendant power economically,
Speaker 5: but hadn't yet fully really come to terms with what
Speaker 5: that meant in terms of its geopolitical role. Now it's
Speaker 5: a different situation, but you know, I think we told
Speaker 5: ourselves a pretty compelling fairy tale about the end of
Speaker 5: the Cold war and the collapse of the sum Union
Speaker 5: and the march of history being towards democracy and interdependence.
Speaker 3: And it didn't work out.
Speaker 5: But that's not the story that Putin and those who
Speaker 5: brought him to power told the Russian people. It's not
Speaker 5: the story that Xi Jinping has for the Chinese people.
Speaker 5: So it's a hard moment, I think for us children
Speaker 5: of the seventies and eighties, Right, we grew up in
Speaker 5: a world that felt like, even when it was screwed up,
Speaker 5: that was moving in the right direction eventually. I don't know,
Speaker 5: as the famous Nixon in China moment, right, and Joan
Speaker 5: Lie he's talking with and he brings up the French Revolution,
Speaker 5: and Chinese leader says, yeah, well it's a little bit
Speaker 5: too early to tell how it worked out.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Susan Glasser.
Speaker 1: Ruth ben Jiot is the author of Strong Men, Musolini
Speaker 1: to the Present and an MSNBC car mess Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Ruth, Thank you delighted to be here.
Speaker 3: It's nothing to talk about, Ray, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, yeah, and especially not on the democracy beat. I
Speaker 1: long for the days of January twenty twenty one, when
Speaker 1: we had one and democracy was safe.
Speaker 5: What happened January sixth was just this profoundly radicalizing event
Speaker 5: for the GOP. And of course there were already numerous
Speaker 5: elites of the party who are willing to work since
Speaker 5: November to try and overturn the democracy in other ways,
Speaker 5: but breaking that taboo, having that rally transmute into violence,
Speaker 5: seeing the Capitol police have their heads bashed in and
Speaker 5: this is supposed to be the pro police, law and
Speaker 5: order party, all of that was this really a watershed
Speaker 5: moment where the unscrupulous, violent oriented people in the party
Speaker 5: realized that anything was possible, and so the wavering that
Speaker 5: a few of them had on January seventh was swiftly
Speaker 5: replaced by we're going to go all in for this
Speaker 5: because anything is possible.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: There was a moment, I feel like a conscious moment
Speaker 1: somewhere in January when Kevin McCarthy decided to go down
Speaker 1: to mow Lago and fundraised with trumpet Like, if we
Speaker 1: look back at one decision to another decision to another decision,
Speaker 1: to the end of democracy, at least a republican party
Speaker 1: that no longer believes in democratic values.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Unfortunately, that's often how it happens, especially if it's
Speaker 5: nowadays or but also like that happened with Mussolini, who
Speaker 5: was prime minister in a democracy for three years, and
Speaker 5: people don't understand what this kind of leader is capable of.
Speaker 5: They think, okay, you know, he's done this, now going
Speaker 5: to be satisfied. They don't understand, or if they understand
Speaker 5: about examples abroad, they don't think it's going to happen
Speaker 5: to them. It's a lack of vision in a negative sense.
Speaker 5: And because of the people I study and I'm in
Speaker 5: their heads, unfortunately, it was very clear to me what
Speaker 5: was going on. And also what you mentioned with Kevin
Speaker 5: McCarthy going to Mari Lago, this was the proverbial, you know,
Speaker 5: checking in with the cult leader and he got his
Speaker 5: instructions and then the party fell into line, and very
Speaker 5: soon there was an actual party line, and this sped up,
Speaker 5: you know, the kind of process of making the gop autocratics.
Speaker 5: So in those months it's very interesting. I'm glad you
Speaker 5: took us back there because you know, Ted Cruz, for example,
Speaker 5: made a mistake where he said that January sixth had
Speaker 5: been a domestic terror operation. Well this wasn't what you're
Speaker 5: supposed to say, so Tucker Carlson hauled him on his
Speaker 5: show and humiliated him. And I thought that was very
Speaker 5: interesting because it was a bad sign for the future
Speaker 5: because Ted Cruz's status as a senator had no interest
Speaker 5: or relevance for Tucker Carlson, who was the enforcer of
Speaker 5: the party line, And that showed me that they were
Speaker 5: all in for reinventing the narrative of January sixth, and
Speaker 5: they've been very successful two years later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk about Mussolini.
Speaker 1: Italy has been in some ways, even though it's very
Speaker 1: small and it's got an insane economy that's not so good,
Speaker 1: and they're an agent population, but they do have Burlasconi
Speaker 1: walked so Donald Trump could run talk to me about
Speaker 1: Mussolini and sort of what the kind of similarities they are.
Speaker 5: So he was the one who wrote the template for
Speaker 5: everybody else, including Hitler who was watching. And Mussolini is
Speaker 5: so relevant because when he came in as he was
Speaker 5: appointed as Prime Minister of democracy coalition government, and he
Speaker 5: spent the next three years trying to figure out how
Speaker 5: to expand his power and this had never been done,
Speaker 5: so you know, he attacked the press, he posed as
Speaker 5: a victim and again Hitler adored him and was watching
Speaker 5: to see if he could do the same thing, and
Speaker 5: that's partly why he did is beer Hawk putch in
Speaker 5: nineteen twenty three. But the key thing is that Mussolini
Speaker 5: was very corrupt, and there was the Socialist leader of Italy, Mattiotti,
Speaker 5: was denouncing him in parliament. He was denouncing election fraud
Speaker 5: that they were trying to pull off, and so Mussoleni
Speaker 5: had him murdered and they opened an investigation, and there
Speaker 5: were calls for him to resign and he was probably
Speaker 5: going to go to prison, so he declared dictatorship to
Speaker 5: escape an investigation and be able to shut it down.
Speaker 5: So this is all very relevant to started a series
Speaker 5: of a strongman some operating in democracy like Netta Nahou
Speaker 5: or bare Lusconi, where if you have problems, you run
Speaker 5: for office and you have to get more back into
Speaker 5: office so you can shut down down the investigation and
Speaker 5: you can make yourself feel safe forever.
Speaker 1: One of the things I think about when I think
Speaker 1: about Mussolini is he was charismatic in a way that
Speaker 1: Hitler wasn't quite ascarse as will you talk about. Because
Speaker 1: one of the things with Trump and with the vague.
Speaker 1: Is there's a certain kind of huckster quality that I
Speaker 1: think is really how Donald Trump has gotten so far.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, in his case, he sees a con man
Speaker 5: and had a long history of dealing with criminals through
Speaker 5: his businesses. But a lot of these strong men who
Speaker 5: have success, it's very interesting that a lot of them
Speaker 5: come from a background of journalism or entertainment, and they
Speaker 5: know how to work a crowd. Indeed, they scan the
Speaker 5: political marketplace before venturing out, and they see what is lacking,
Speaker 5: what is needed, and then they address those needs and
Speaker 5: they will be whatever they need to be to get
Speaker 5: to power. And so that's where they pick up endorsers
Speaker 5: and enablers along the way, and they often throw them
Speaker 5: under the bus when they don't need them anymore. But
Speaker 5: their charisma is extremely important in them being able to
Speaker 5: have these kind of this loyalty, this fanatic loyalty, but
Speaker 5: it's cultivated. So Trump knew he's a showman. He's very
Speaker 5: good at that, and he's superb propagandist. But he built
Speaker 5: up this loyalty very early on, having loyalty oaths as
Speaker 5: early as twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. And so when we
Speaker 5: look back we see somebody who ceaselessly, relentlessly cultivated this
Speaker 5: kind of leader cult and used his charisma to build
Speaker 5: up his base. Here we are seven years later, and
Speaker 5: there's a recent poll that has people talking because it
Speaker 5: said that among the most fervent, they trust Trump more
Speaker 5: than they trust their family members.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a really interesting and worrying Paul.
Speaker 5: And that's why I've been saying for years that Trump
Speaker 5: is a cult leader. He has a leader cull and
Speaker 5: that's why he's in my book because there are things
Speaker 5: that are very different today. Right, we don't have as
Speaker 5: many one party states, we have social media. But the
Speaker 5: process of cultivating your followers and having a cult and
Speaker 5: using your machismo and being brutal and lawless and having
Speaker 5: that be glamorized, that's the same as Mussoline.
Speaker 3: Right, but also the same as Berlsconi.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Berlisconi. He you know, he's not taken seriously. Oh,
Speaker 5: there's not much interest in him. But he's absolutely fundamental
Speaker 5: because he broke taboos in the nineteen nineties after you know,
Speaker 5: right after communism had fallen. He was the first to
Speaker 5: bring fascist into power into the government, and he broke
Speaker 5: that taboo for all of Europe, and he normalized neo fascism,
Speaker 5: and he normalized Mussolini.
Speaker 3: And I actually had.
Speaker 5: A full bright there during his first government, and I
Speaker 5: saw this happening. And I'd been going to Italy and
Speaker 5: I would go to the dry cleaner or wherever, and
Speaker 5: I would, you know, the woman would say, oh, your
Speaker 5: talent's so good when you studying, and I'd say fascism
Speaker 5: and there would be this embarrassed silence. After Breosconi had
Speaker 5: these three different, you know, center right governments with neo fascists,
Speaker 5: it became like the people could say what they previously
Speaker 5: said only in private. So I heard Pauh Mussolini was
Speaker 5: such a good ruler, and one woman said he only
Speaker 5: harmed subversives and Jews, like, okay, that was fine, right, It's.
Speaker 3: Only subversives and Jews.
Speaker 5: So I lived through this normalization of neo fascism, and
Speaker 5: that experience of seeing how it changed among the general
Speaker 5: public allowed me to see very early that Trump was
Speaker 5: going to do the same thing with you. Signaling to
Speaker 5: extremists and calling neo Nazis very fine people. All of
Speaker 5: this was calculated to create an environment conducive to accepting him.
Speaker 5: As an authoritarian, accepting violence and all that goes with it.
Speaker 1: Right, it's such an interesting, important piece of this puzzle.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about sort of authoritarianism as it is now.
Speaker 1: It's crisscross the globe in different places, but right now
Speaker 1: Italy has yet again a pretty scary government.
Speaker 3: Will you talk about Maloney?
Speaker 5: Jojo Maloney is the first prime minister to come from
Speaker 5: neo fascism, and she masquerades as a conservative and she
Speaker 5: is pro you know, helping Ukraine, that's kind of her alibi.
Speaker 5: But in her domestic policies she is a hardcore extremist
Speaker 5: and she always has been. She insisted when she founded
Speaker 5: her brother's a Italy party, she insisted on leaving the
Speaker 5: frame in the party logo and that flame goes all
Speaker 5: the way back to the original neo fascist party that
Speaker 5: was founded after Mussolini's party died in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 5: The flame stands for keeping the spirit of Mussolinia alive.
Speaker 5: She is a creature of Mussolini, who is her spiritual leader,
Speaker 5: let's say, but also Berlusconi. Berlusconi was the first person
Speaker 5: to make her a minister. She was very young and
Speaker 5: so all of that heritage of both ber Lusconi and
Speaker 5: Mussolini goes into her government, and it's important to know
Speaker 5: how extreme she is because she's covering it up very
Speaker 5: well now. So on the subject of great replacement theory,
Speaker 5: which is an international talking point that Gop shares with
Speaker 5: Orebon with her party, she doesn't just believe that Italy,
Speaker 5: being a white Christian nation, is threatened by demographic change.
Speaker 5: She thinks there's a plot by George Soros, of course,
Speaker 5: by the by NATO, by the e to flood Italy
Speaker 5: with non white immigrants and thus make white Italians extinct.
Speaker 5: And she has a very scary phrase for this, called
Speaker 5: ethnic substitution. I'm focusing on this because she's getting a
Speaker 5: lot of press and she had a nice visit with
Speaker 5: Biden because of her stance on Ukraine. But that's allowing
Speaker 5: her to seem normal to the outside world, so that
Speaker 5: she can more easily be extreme at.
Speaker 1: Home, and I think that is a really important data point.
Speaker 1: She's also made it harder for gay couples to adopt right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she's against same sex marriage, adopting against surrogacy, and
Speaker 5: so here we in Italy of course got the Vatican inside.
Speaker 5: It's its own state, of course, and the people she
Speaker 5: has in your government as ministers either come from the
Speaker 5: very far right Catholic. Her Minister of Family, who's in
Speaker 5: charge of a lot of this family policy that's that's
Speaker 5: courting LGBTQ people, is from that far right Catholics like
Speaker 5: or They were actually neo fascists like her in their youth.
Speaker 5: I've analyzed all of her cabinet and it's basically neo
Speaker 5: fascist and fanatic Catholics.
Speaker 1: So let's pull back and talk a little bit about Orbon.
Speaker 1: Orbon is a favorite, a GOP favorite. I was hoping
Speaker 1: you could just zoom in on where he is now
Speaker 1: and where the GOP.
Speaker 3: Is with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One thing that we need to focus on a bit
Speaker 5: more is so, as you know, I consider the GOP
Speaker 5: and autocratic party now, it is a party with a
Speaker 5: leader cult. It is a party that is dependent on
Speaker 5: lying on corruption and election.
Speaker 3: Denial as a form of corruption. It's not just.
Speaker 5: A lie, it's on violence. Of course, the GOP has
Speaker 5: officially declared in twenty twenty two that January sixth was
Speaker 5: quote legitimate political discourse. Okay, So that's all of that
Speaker 5: and much more. They are an autocratic party, they're not
Speaker 5: interested in democracy. But ever free party, especially a huge
Speaker 5: party in a bipartisan country, has a kind of foreign
Speaker 5: policy stands. And the GOP, it's not known enough that
Speaker 5: it has very close relations with all kinds of autocracies.
Speaker 5: And we see it in the talking points, whether it's
Speaker 5: on immigration or great Replacement theory or Ukraine where they circulate.
Speaker 5: And the one that's gotten the most attention is the
Speaker 5: GOP in Orbon because Tucker Carlson broadcast for a week
Speaker 5: there and Seatpack has its conferences there. So the GOP
Speaker 5: is seen by these people, including Maloney. Maloney right before
Speaker 5: she was elected, she said that she sees the GOP
Speaker 5: as a kindred spirit. So I think Americans need to
Speaker 5: understand that the GOP is seen by these autocrats and
Speaker 5: neo fascists as one of their own, and Orbon is
Speaker 5: the mentor of in a way, because he's been so
Speaker 5: successful at what's called electoral autop. You keep the trappings
Speaker 5: of elections, but over time, and he's been there, you know,
Speaker 5: over a decade, so he's had time to do this.
Speaker 5: You rig this system by purging non loyalists not only
Speaker 5: from the election around apparatus, but the judiciary, you domesticate
Speaker 5: the media. It's very hard for in the last election,
Speaker 5: the opposition coalition didn't get a lot of national media
Speaker 5: airtime because his cronies have taken over the media. So
Speaker 5: you do all these things so that the elections are
Speaker 5: weighted to come out the way you need them to.
Speaker 5: And the Republicans who go there and love him, that's
Speaker 5: one of the lessons that they're taking away.
Speaker 1: One of the things you see again and again with
Speaker 1: Ron de Santis is like he's constantly targeting the media.
Speaker 1: And even when we saw that super Pack memo that
Speaker 1: was released, every bit of it was like, let's just
Speaker 1: go for the media. And even last night he was saying,
Speaker 1: this is really the fault of the media. This has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with anyone but the media. I mean,
Speaker 1: you really do see how hatred of the media is
Speaker 1: and shutting down the media itself is really a crucial
Speaker 1: aspect of this authoritarian regime.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is, and I talk about this in my book.
Speaker 5: That is absolutely essential. And the smart authoritarian starts this
Speaker 5: campaign against the media while they're still running for office
Speaker 5: and they have to build and Trump did this very effectively,
Speaker 5: and so DeSantis, of course being a mini Trump has
Speaker 5: learned from this. So in Trump's case, for example, there
Speaker 5: were plenty of people who are already racists, plenty of
Speaker 5: people hated immigrants and so on, and there was a
Speaker 5: very robust tea party and other discourse against the quote
Speaker 5: mainstream media. Fine, but Trump was the first to truly
Speaker 5: focus on journalists as enemies and demonize them, and he
Speaker 5: did that spatially with his rallies. How he penned them up.
Speaker 5: So the reason they do this is they must become
Speaker 5: the only arbiter of truth. This is part of the
Speaker 5: loyalty business. Also, more practically, they are all corrupt, and
Speaker 5: if their secrets come out, whether it's during the campaign
Speaker 5: or when they're elected, they need the public to already
Speaker 5: be turned against the media, to already believe that the
Speaker 5: media are partisan hacks. And so it's part of a
Speaker 5: process of cultivation and it's worked brilliantly. So Ronda Santis
Speaker 5: He's watched all this and he thinks he has to
Speaker 5: do this too. He's also an unlikable, disagreeable person who
Speaker 5: has not had good media because of this and is
Speaker 5: just very bitter. But there's also a political strategy behind it.
Speaker 1: So interesting Ruth, I hope you'll come back anytime.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: They're as.
Speaker 3: Jesse Cannon, Molly John Fast for vic Ramaswami cannot disappear
Speaker 3: fast enough. This fucking guy, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Vivek was on Dana Bashi's show, A State of the Union,
Speaker 1: and she asked him about his KKK comment that he
Speaker 1: compared Democrats to the KKK, and then instead of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously Democrats are not members of the KKK,
Speaker 1: he instead just doubled down and he said something to
Speaker 1: the effect of Democrats judge people on their skin color,
Speaker 1: which there's no evidence to support this, and thus they
Speaker 1: are the same as the KKK. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: when everything is false equivalencies, then these two false equivalencies
Speaker 1: can be falsely equivalent. But for that the veak rhymes
Speaker 1: with cake is our moment of fuckery. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday
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